I live off Brennanstown Road in Cabinteely and have done so for 12 years. Two weeks ago I started receiving memorandums and circulars from my local TDs, councillors and residents groups. The heading on most of these memos said "Traffic Calming & Traffic Management Scheme". What could they possibly do to Brennanstown Road? It's a long twisty, narrow road connecting Carrickmines Cross to Cabinteely Village.

It's actually quite difficult to go fast on it, particularly when there is other traffic on the road at the same time.

I went down through the measures proposed for implementation . . . speed ramps, roundabouts, cycle paths . . .

where was this going? To my utter amazement they proposed making almost half of the road one-way. Effectively it means that everybody who lives on the Cabinteely side of the village can only go through the village to access where they wanted to go.

The village, even outside of rush hour and school hours is a bottleneck. Forcing people to go only one-way will double or triple that traffic. It will also divert traffic through other private estates creating rat runs. How could this possibly be for the benefit of the residents of Brennanstown Road?

A meeting was held last week in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown county council chambers. There were several local authority officials in attendance; the hour that I spent will serve as a reminder of how things are done at this level.

A group of residents probed the officials as to why a oneway road system was being proposed. The traffic calming and road safety issues were put forward as reasons for the proposals. Everybody at the table got to the kernel of the issue pretty quickly. Over the last year or two there were some fairly large houses sold on the road for development, including land at Barrington Towers and Lehaunstown.

Developers applied for planning permission. Some were denied, some had to re-submit and some are awaiting decisions. In all cases the ability of Brennanstown Road to take the extra capacity was a major factor in either a refusal or a precondition.

To accommodate the densities required, the developers needed Brennanstown Road to become a one-way system.

The development levy scheme was thrown out to the residents. The developer would be footing the bill for all the unnecessary traffic calming measures. At the meeting no alternatives were suggested, such as CPS's, road widening, a traffic light system. To make matters worse no solutions were offered on how to deal with the increased traffic and congestion in the village.

Every rational question gave way to hastily conceived answers which gave the impression no thought had gone in to the consequences of the council's proposed actions.

Section 94 of the Road Traffic Act makes the implementation of such proposals an executive function . . . that means the issue will be decided by the county manager. The process is non-statutory, so all TDs in the area and local councillors voted in by the people on Brennanstown Road effectively have no say in the process.

I re-iterate the line "a local issue with a national dimension". If the council is prepared to disenfranchise people who have lived in Brennanstown for a long time in favour of giving a developer the densities required, well then action of a different kind will have to be taken. I still believe that I live in a democracy.